1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an apparatus and a method for a location based data service, and more particularly, to an apparatus and a method for a location based data service that provides a location based data service with respect to a location of interest.
2. Description of the Related Art
In general, a prior art location based data service uses a technique in which a predetermined point included in map information is set to coordinates (X, Y) and a one-to-one matched data of the coordinate is provided. The predetermined point indicates a name or trade name of a place of user's interest. The set coordinates are connected to point of interest (POI) information to provide a user desired data.
FIGS. 1 and 2 show a conventional method for a location based data service. Referring to FIGS. 1 and 2, the prior art method is described.
As shown in FIG. 1, in the conventional location based data service, when a user selects a certain area, map information of the selected area is provided. Next, when a predetermined point on the map information is selected, point of interest information associated with the predetermined point is provided. When a desired location based data is selected from the point of interest information provided, a corresponding data is provided.
Alternatively, as shown in FIG. 2, in the conventional location based data service, when the user selects a certain area, map information of the selected area is provided. Next, when a predetermined point on the map information is selected, a search window is provided and a desired location based data is extracted from a database based on word search.
According to the prior art described above, data is matched one-to-one with a point (coordinates) to be managed, and thus, when multiple location based data are required for the same location, multiple matching coordinates are needed as many as the number of the multiple location based data. In this case, precise selection of the wanted data by the user is difficult, and confusion can be created as to which information about the location is wanted because there are multiple data indicating the same wanted location expressed in different coordinates. Thus, in searching for a specific location, unnecessary time is consumed in conducting comparison between contents and position coordinates of the data.
In addition, in the prior art, various location based data indicating the same location, which is categorized by layer on an electronic map, is stored in a separate database, thereby requiring additional resources. Also, coordinate information such as, for example, the POI information is not cumulatively managed. Therefore, when the map information is updated, there is a need to compare existing location based content and new POI information that is changed to verify that the two are identical.